Consumer devices, such as smartphones, tablets, home smart speakers with virtual assistants, and others, include “digital assistant” features that passively listen to all sounds in the vicinity of the device in an attempt to identify voice commands made by users and provide assistance with a variety of tasks. To function, those devices capture the aforementioned sounds and transmit them over the Internet to the device manufacturer where they are processed for recognition of the owner's voice, word identification, and recognition of intents using artificial intelligence techniques. They are transformed to digital text and sent back to the devices for further processing, and copies are kept in a cloud provider for further analysis and for continual improvement of the services provided to the consumers.
Storage of user's provided information, either in the original audio form or a translated version, may violate local or other applicable privacy laws of a jurisdiction (e.g. country or state/province) where the consumer resides, exposing the service provider to potential criminal and civil liability as a result, as well as reputational damage and loss of public confidence due to real or perceived privacy violations. Accordingly, approaches are needed for appropriately identifying private information and flagging actions for handling that information, to prevent such real or perceived privacy violations.